South Australia Bird Watching

We kept stopping to top off the gas at Roadhouses. At 12:30pm we got Maxibonds, the lunch of travelers. The bathroom at the gas station in Penong had a sign that read: "Go easy on the water, it doesn't come out of the air or a pipe; it comes on a truck". A lot of the farms here had windmills to pump water out of the ground and into storage tanks.

At 1:45pm we crossed the "Dog Fence" (31.523S 131.881E) that runs for 5614 Km around SA, NSW and Qld to keep out the Dingoes -- NOT.

In the afternoon we came close to the Great Australian Bight (31.638S 129.384E) -- so named because the map of Australia looks like someone took a bight out of it here. The bight looks to be 600 miles long, but it actually stretches from Tasmania thru Western Australia (several thousand miles). From the rocks exposed in the Bight they have established that Australia was once connected to Antarctica.

Most of the afternoon we could see the sand dunes and ocean that run along the Bight. Later, fog moved in. The fog finally dissipated enough so we could see the Bight at a pull-out.

The morning drive was thru wheat field with a venire of trees and shrubs along the road for visual effect. In the afternoon we entered the Nullarbor Plain. Nullarbor is Latin for No Trees! We got to the WA border at 5:30pm. Just across the border we came upon a "Crow" in the road. We assumed it would move, but it didn't, so we ran over it. Turns out we ran over our new bird of the day, a Brown Currawong. We saw more later.

When we stopped for gas, we learned this part of WA has their own time zone; i.e., they are 45 minutes ahead of Perth and 45 minutes behind Adelaide

We go to the hotel about 5:45pm. After a little rest we had lunch at the Roadhouse. I got Chicken Parmigiana with chips and salad. Wilma got a T-Bone Steak. The chicken was great. The streak was so-so.

E-mail if you would like a file with the specific birds we saw each day.